Another Part of the Wood

As Lynn Barber notes in the introduction, the camp used in this novel is based on one Bainbridge visited as a child, built by a philanthropist as a place for slum families to get fresh air. It is meant to be idyllic but I can't help thinking that the families it was intended for must have regarded the bunkhouses with no electricity, scratchy blankets, straw-filled mattresses, and chemical toilet, with as much horror as Bainbridge's characters. The story, with spare narrative is set in the 1960s, and is more about emotional forces than action or plot. The author's style is not to spell everything out but to leave much to the reader's intelligence. The intensely unlikeable characters grouse and find fault with each other until the show more catastrophic conclusion is inevitable. show less

Bainbridge's second novel is short and fairly fast-paced. Most of the characters are fish-out-of-water urbanites who are "slumming it" in a cabin in a forest in Wales. There are genuine Who's-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolfesque moments of tension, with a nerve-racking build-up that calls to mind Ravel's orchestral piece Boléro.

Beryl Bainbridge writes in an inaccessible style, with a lot of dialogue and very little description. That is why it is difficult to get a grip on the story, which only develops through the interactions of the characters. Only late into the story, as the reader becomes more acquainted with the main characters, we may get glimpses of what Bainbridge may have intended to share.

In the autumn of 2011, Penguin Books reissued Another part of the wood in their Penguin Decades series, as a novel representative of the 1960s.

The title obviously refers to Shakespeare, where magic usually happens in the wood. Throughout the 60s and 70s novelists set stories to take place in (artists') communities in forests, as an ideal setting away from ordinary show more life, a place where a transformation might take place. In that sense, the forest retreat is often the time or place where something unusual might happen.

Not so in Bainbridge's Another part of the wood. The families spending their time in this holiday camp, are very ordinary people, who carry their ordinary lives with them. There is no magic, and no happenings. They have taken with them, and play the same games as at home, with the same quibbles and irritations. Playing Monopoly does not bring out the best in them, and in their selfish concentration they lose eye for what is around them. The death, at the end of the story, is the result of this neglect. show less

K started reading it on 5 July 2010 (noting that the author died last week :-( )K finished it on 14 July 2010 - most of the characters were unlikable, but maybe that was the point...3 stars David.